Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	ability_n	able_a	willing_a	41	3	7.3300	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44438	The fourth (and last) volume of discourses, or sermons, on several scriptures by Exekiel Hopkins ...	Hopkins, Ezekiel, 1634-1690.	1696 (1696)	Wing H2734; ESTC R43261	196,621	503

received it was for us and what he did was done by us and what he lost we lost in him Now if we have lost this Power of Obeying must God also lose his Priviledge and Sovereignty of Commanding Must he lessen his Authority as we lessen our Ability Truly had Adam once thought of this slight he might have sinn'd himself quite from under the command and dominion of his Creator and might soon have become thus free Do not you your selves think you may if a Debtor of yours through his own default becomes a Bankrupt require your Debt of him So stands the Case here between God and us we are all disabled to pay the Debt of Obedience that we owe to God but yet it is through our own default and the Power that we had is not so much lost as wilfully thrown away and may not God justly come upon us for our Debt Our want of Power takes not off our obligation to Obedience because it is through a wilful defect that we are deprived of that Power If a Servant throw away his Tools with which he should work may not his Master justly expect his Work from him though he knows he cannot work without them God's Commands respect not the Impotency that we have contracted nor do they therefore abate any thing of their Severity but they respect that Power and Ability that was once conferred and bestowed upon us Yea were it so that God could with Justice require no more from us than what at present we have Power and Ability to perform this would make the Grace of God First vain and fruitless and Secondly dangerous and destructive First This would make void the pardoning Grace of God For according to this Doctrin nothing could be required of us if we could do nothing but without Grace we can do nothing and therefore if Grace be not bestowed on us nothing can justly be required from us and if nothing be required nothing is due from us and then we do not sin in not performing any thing and where there is no sin certainly there can be no place for pardoning Grace and Mercy And so these wise Men who think they do so much befriend the Grace and Mercy of God in all haste in affirming that God requires nothing from us but what at present we have Power to perform are injurious to the Mercy of God in making of it void as to Pardon and Remission Secondly this Doctrin makes the sanctifying Grace of God destructive and pernicious If God can require justly no more of us than we can perform wherefore is it that Men are justly damned Is it not because they will not do what they are able to do And whence is it that they have this Ability Is it not from the Grace of God's Spirit And therefore if they have not Grace to make them able to do more than their own corrupt Wills are willing to do God could not justly condemn them and consequently that of the Apostle should stand no longer true Eph. 2.5 Through Grace ye are saved but through Grace ye perish These two Consequences will follow if God could justly require no more from us than what we have Power now to do So that tho' we have not Power and Ability to work out our own Salvation yet we are not thereby excused from our Obligation to do it But Answ 2 Secondly Though we cannot of our selves work out our own Salvation Yet God doth not mock us as some do thence infer neither doth he only upbraid us with our own Weakness but hath serious and weighty ends why he Commands us to Obey Those that are so ready to cast this Odium upon the Doctrin of Special Grace making God a derider of Human Frailty and Miseries when he Commands Obedience from them to whom say they himself denies that Power and Grace that should inable them to obey I would only ask these Persons this Question Whether do they grant or whether or no can they deny that God antecedently before he Commands knows who will obey and who will not obey If they say God knows who will not obey will they say God mocks them when he Commands them to obey though he knows they will not What they Answer to this the same may we Answer to their Objection But now there are two Ends why God Commands us thus to work though we are not able according to which God is very serious in commanding us thus to work And God doth this First That he may hereby convince us of our own Weakness and that wretched Estate into which our Sins have brought us that he might humble and abase us when we reflect how far we are fallen from our first Perfection and Excellency When we consider on the one Hand that God requires nothing from us now but what we once had a Power to perform and then on the other Hand consider how little yea how much of that nothing it is that now we have Power to perform this convinces us how miserably great our Fall is that makes those things impossible to us that once were both easie and delightful Secondly God loves to deal with Men as with rational Creatures that have free Faculties capable of moral Influences fit Subjects to be wrought upon by Precepts Counsels Commands and Exhortations as well as by Internal and Efficacious Grace that Arguments and Motives may persuade without as Grace sways within that so by both he might render them a willing People in the Day of his Power And therefore they are not in vain neither to those that shall be saved nor to those that Perish First To those that shall be saved these are the Instruments which the Spirit of God makes use of to incline their Wills and conquer their Affections into the Obedience of Christ and therefore they are not in vain In conversion ordinarily if not always the Moral work goes before the Physical That is there is first the rational Persuasion before there is the efficacious and determining Motion For God when he works on Man he accommodates himself suitable to the Nature of Man that as he is a Creature so he may be and is the Subject of Gods efficacious Motions and as he is Rational so he may be guided by Counsels lead by Persuasions over-awed by Convictions and therefore when God Converts any he takes both these ways inwardly he works by effectual Grace powerfully subduing the Will as a Creature subject unto it and outwardly he works by moral Suasions and Authoritative Commands whereby he inclines the will sweetly and freely to consent to the Power of that inward Grace which indeed he shall never nay indeed he cannot resist and both these together do concur as I said before to make a willing People in the Day of Gods Power And Secondly For those that Perish these Commands have a double end and use First They are Instruments in the Hand of the common work of the Spirit of God to